The Environmental Protection Agency has reported to Congress that its regulation to control stormwater runoff from small construction sites and small municipal storm sewer systems will have relatively little economic effect.
The recent rule supplements an existing regulation that limits runoff from cities larger than 100,000 people and industrial or construction sites larger than five acres.
The latest rule reduces stormwater runoff from construction sites between one and five acres and municipal storm sewer systems in urbanized areas serving populations of less than 100,000.
EPA said stormwater runoff from streets, parking lots, construction sites, and residential yards can carry sediment, oil, grease, toxins, pesticides, pathogens and other pollutants into storm drains. They, in turn, empty the water untreated into streams and waterways.
EPA said stormwater runoff is a leading public health and environmental threat because it can contaminate drinking and recreational waters. It is a major source of beach and shellfish bed closures.
The agency said stormwater runoff washes sediment from construction sites at a rate of 20 to 150 tons per acre each year. Sediment is the single largest cause of impaired water quality in rivers.
Municipal officials, including those from Texas counties, objected to the latest rule at a recent Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. They said because the rule is based on population and not water quality, many arid Texas counties would be subject to the same regulations as counties elsewhere with much higher annual rainfall totals.
As a result of their objections, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) inserted a provision in EPAs fiscal 2000 spending bill requiring an analysis of the rules effect.
EPA reported that the regulation would require stormwater controls in about 5,040 additional municipalities. It said the rule could potentially cost the towns $297 million yearly, but the actual cost would be much less because of the availability of hardship waivers.
EPA Budget
Congress has voted to appropriate $7.59 billion for the EPA in fiscal 2000, nearly $400 million more than the Clinton administration had requested. That was largely because Congress directed $1.35 billion be spent on the clean water state revolving fund, about $500 million more than the administration had requested. Congress also added $230 million to the safe drinking water revolving fund, bringing it to $820 million.
Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office has reported that EPA is failing to meet the drinking water research goals set in the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments. GAO, a congressional watchdog agency, said EPA routinely has requested millions of dollars less for research than Congress has authorized. It said water groups are concerned about the adequacy of research for upcoming regulations on arsenic and a future rule on microbial pathogens, disinfectants, and disinfection byproducts.
While EPA officials acknowledge that some high priority research projects will not be completed in time for these regulations, they believe that the available research will be sufficient to support the regulations with sound science.
Enforcement
James Bragg of Lanark, W.Va., has been sentenced to a year in prison and a year on supervised release in Beckley, W.Va., U.S. District Court.
Bragg owned a sewage treatment facility in Grandview, W.Va., and had admitted that in June 1996 he allowed untreated sewage from the plant to flow into the waters of Pledge Branch, which empties into the New River.
